The Talk That Makes Every Relationship Stronger

In August 2011, two Navy officers knocked on Kimberly Vaughn's door and told her that her husband had been killed in Afghanistan. Still reeling from the loss, she shares why planning for the worst actually deepened her marriage — and could do the same for yours.

"I look so badass in this picture," Aaron said one morning while flipping through photos from his seven-month deployment in Iraq. In the shot, my husband is leaning on a Humvee, wearing camouflage fatigues and holding a loaded M-4 rifle. "Use it on my memorial program," he added, never taking his eyes off the image. We were curled up on the couch in the family room of our house in Coronado, CA, near the naval base. It was 2009. We were still newlyweds — married for just over a year — and already I was accustomed to the way he casually talked about his own death. Aaron was a Navy SEAL, a member of the elite military combat force branded the "ultimate warriors." SEALs are the ones sent in for the most dangerous special ops, including the mission that captured Osama bin Laden last year. Having buried a number of his comrades, Aaron never glossed over the very real possibility that he could be next.

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Don't get me wrong — we were generally very upbeat together. I was a 30-year-old Redskins cheerleader when I met Aaron in Guam in 2005. I had volunteered to dance in the United Service Organization's variety shows during the off-season to entertain troops stationed overseas. Aaron had enlisted in the military three years earlier, at 21, like so many other young men and women who joined up in the months following the September 11 attacks. He was deployed to Guam, and I was only there for two days before flying off to the next stop on our tour. The night before our performance, I went with a few other dancers to a local dive bar. I noticed Aaron almost immediately: He was tall with an adorable thatch of strawberry-blond hair peeking out from beneath his Miller High Life baseball cap. He hung back from the dance floor with his buddies, but when they announced it was the last song of the night, I asked him to dance. He confessed that he had two left feet but didn't want to turn me down. The next day he came to the show, and we talked for hours until he dropped me off at the airport for my flight. I didn't think I'd see him again — he was six years younger than me and stationed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But he wouldn't let me leave without giving him my email address.

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To my surprise, he used it. For the next four months, we traded emails and phone calls, until Aaron returned to his base in Southern California and I could visit him. That's when I knew we were serious. We were married in May 2008 in Washington, DC, and honored our military guests with a special dance to Toby Keith's "American Soldier." Aaron's friends, decked out in their dress blues, had just returned from the war zone. See, I told myself, many of them do make it back.

We didn't have a honeymoon. Three days before the wedding, Aaron got word that he needed to be back in Coronado to train new SEALs before his next deployment, to Afghanistan. Was I disappointed? Of course, but I knew the drill. My father, grandfather, and uncle were all in the Navy, and my sister was married to an Army guy. What no one could prepare me for was the ritual of completing deployment paperwork, which details a family's wishes in case their loved one dies. It was unnerving to write the names of the guys who had just stood as our groomsmen in the section listing pallbearers.

"You can never remarry," Aaron declared before leaving home again in 2009, after more than a year of training back in the United States. I had just given birth to our son, Reagan, and I could tell that the war — and the new family he was leaving behind — weighed on him. "No problem," I replied, smiling. (I liked that he was protective, with just the right twinge of jealousy.) That's usually how these talks started: He'd spout off his dying wishes at random moments, and we'd banter playfully. It was our way of dealing with pre-deployment jitters. "I'd want you to grieve for a couple months before you go out partying," Aaron would tease, and I'd joke back, "What if you died a young stud and by the time I met you in heaven I was an old lady with a walker? Would you still want me?" But beneath it all, the reality of planning for a life that might not include my husband seeped into every aspect of our relationship, and we made the most of the time we did have.

I tried to include Aaron in every milestone. While stationed in Afghanistan, he watched on Skype the first time our son rolled over, giggled, and ate a meal. He stole brief moments to call to tell me he loved me, even when he was exhausted from a grueling day. When he was home, I'd get up with him at 5 a.m. every morning to make him coffee and blueberry Eggo waffles before he left for work. I never missed a breakfast, because I cherished that quiet time alone while our son was still asleep. At night, we made the extra effort to talk before bedtime instead of zoning out in front of the television. And we purchased a lot to build our dream house in Virginia Beach — we didn't want to put it off just because we knew he was scheduled for another tour. That didn't mean we were unrealistic; Aaron urged my parents to buy the land right next to us, and at first I thought he was crazy. What husband wants his in-laws next door? "When I'm gone, you'll appreciate having them nearby," he said.

Every conversation about losing him felt like peeling back another layer that left us both raw and vulnerable. Just weeks before his last deployment to Afghanistan, in June 2011, over a pepperoni and sausage pizza, Aaron suddenly flip-flopped about my remarrying. "I'd want you to," he said. "We're so young, I'd hate to think of you alone for all those years." At the time, I was pregnant with our second child, who was due two weeks before he deployed. Later that night, as I was folding onesies on top of my enormous belly, I asked him when I should baptize the baby. "You can't expect to get into heaven just because you're baptized," he said. "You have to ask for forgiveness." Knowing that my religious beliefs were somewhat different from his, I suddenly understood that he feared I wouldn't be able to get into heaven too. "I will," I reassured him. In that moment, I saw Aaron not just as my husband but as a young dad dealing with his own mortality and the possibility of leaving behind children who may never know their father. When we said our last good-bye before he set out for what was supposed to be a four-month mission, he squeezed his wedding band onto my thumb and told me, "Things like this have a way of getting lost if something were to happen." It was the first time he had ever left it behind.

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Two months later, on a cloudless August morning, I was staying at my parents' home in Burke, VA, with my kids while our new house was under construction. I had brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and was preparing to feed my 2-month-old daughter, Chamberlyn, in the kitchen when I heard a breaking news announcement on the TV in the next room. I was too busy to pay attention until the anchors somberly reported that a U.S. helicopter carrying 22 Navy SEALs had been shot down in Afghanistan. There were no survivors. I froze in my tracks, but my mind worked quickly. Hadn't I just seen Aaron's Skype icon on my computer screen? Yes, and it had been green for active. I dismissed the negative thoughts and picked up the baby. Minutes later, the doorbell rang.

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When I saw the two naval officers at the door, I knew. My mom grabbed my daughter from my arms, and my dad caught me as I collapsed to the floor in sobs, as if in a slow-motion movie scene. That night, I pulled Aaron's wedding band out of my jewelry box and slipped it back onto my thumb, longing for any connection to him as I plodded along in a suspended state of disbelief. I wanted to hide from the reality of his death, but so many decisions needed to be made. Did my husband want to be cremated? Should his casket be steel or wood? Where did he want to be buried? I needed to know which song to play at his memorial service and which photo to print on the program. The questions overwhelmed me, until I realized that Aaron had planned all of it over the years. We'd had the conversations I needed while he was still alive.

Most of my girlfriends never understood our "If I die" discussions. Their reactions were part fascination, part disbelief at the spookiness of it. To them, it was fine that Aaron and I were realistic about the risks of his job, but they were content to go on thinking of their husbands as invincible, even though more people die in car accidents than on deployments. What most couples don't realize is that they're missing out on a whole level of intimacy. So don't be afraid to talk about death with your spouse — it'll make you more alive in your relationship. Though Aaron and I only had a short time together, those conversations brought us infinitely closer, and it's that passionate intimacy, which touched every aspect of our marriage, that I will always treasure.

HELP KIMBERLY FIND AARON'S WEDDING BAND

In October 2011, two months after Aaron was killed in Afghanistan, Kimberly lost his wedding band, which she'd been wearing to feel closer to his memory. It disappeared between boarding her US Airways flight home from visiting family in Texas and deplaning in Virginia. Since then, thousands have joined in the search for it.

"When I realized it was gone, I could hardly breathe," says Kimberly now, her voice still catching when she remembers the moment. "I had already lost Aaron, and now I had misplaced this invaluable symbol of our love." Flight attendants pulled apart seat cushions in several rows after everyone cleared the plane, but it was nowhere. Hoping desperately that someone would find and return it, she called the airport lost-and-found numbers every day for months, contacted local news stations to spread the word, and finally, at a friend's urging, set up the Facebook page Find Aaron Vaughn's Wedding Band. The page went viral, gaining more than 12,000 fans, many of whom Kimberly had never met. Complete strangers offered her money to replace the ring, and jewelers mailed her free replicas. Thousands more have written touching comments of support and concern: "You and your family are in my prayers!" posted one woman. "Thank you for allowing your husband to fight for my freedom. He is watching over you and your family. You will find it! He will lead you to it." Kimberly still wanders over to baggage claim lost-and-found offices every time she takes a flight, but the ring hasn't turned up. "I still have hope," she says. "But what I've found in its place — the outpouring of love from so many strangers — has helped keep Aaron's memory alive in a way I could never have imagined."

Aaron and Kimberly, with son Reagan and daughter Chamberlyn, two months before Aaron's death.Chamberlyn's tiny toes prop up her parents' rings.Aaron wanted this photo, taken while he was stationed in Iraq in 2008, on his memorial program.